About Me

I am a 42 year old woman that is about as happy and content as one person can be. My husband of 21 years and our 15 year old daughter live on five and a half acres out in the country. We moved from the city four years ago and never looked back. I homeschool our daughter. We also love our animals. Our daughter has a miniature horse and two rabbits. We also have a border collie, two cats (again), two pot belly pigs, four peafowl, three emus, 2 llamas and an undetermined number of chickens, lets just say ohhh about 200. I have many breeds, from layers to fancy chickens. I love poultry shows, I love fowl in general as I have come to find out through having more than just chickens. Chickens will always be my first love though. I do show some of my birds occasionally.

Monday, March 10, 2008

Cranking Up The Old Incubator

Good Monday to y'all folks out there in the world. :) We are having a fine sunny day cranking up around here. Going to be some nice warm temperatures this week. Close to 70 Wednesday and Thursday.

The other day I posted a new picture of Rusty. Here is a picture I took this morning of Ruby and Rudy. All three of my babies are growing up. They sure did help me get through the winter months. I am glad I hatched them.

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This past weekend was a great one. Saturday it was really brutally cold, but we spent it at Fernbank Museum...so winter could blast away...we were indoors.

With the flexibility of Shelby being homeschooled we will often go places like the museum during the week. With Ian starting to take whole weekends off..we are out there with all the other folks...the crowds.

Not being used to this, we found the people all around us to be somewhat uncomfortable, but it wasnt as bad as you would think. Believe it or not, there were a lot of children there with their parents, and the children seemed very well behaved, young and old alike. I guess if you have a wild child you know not to take them to a museum. It would be like taking a bull into a china shop! We had a good time anyway.

Making our way home I needed to stop at Tractor Supply to get feed for the animals. We started to stop at the one in Hiram...but decided to go eat supper at Fuddruckers in Rome, so went on to that TSC in Rome instead. That one is better anyway. The one in Hiram tends to be slack. No one asks if you need help getting all those bags of feed out into the truck. Someone always is willing to help at the one in Rome. This time Ian was with me, so he did the hard work of lifting all those 50 pounds bags into the truck for me.

They had three baby ducks left. They had a lot of white bunnies for sale too. Shelby is really good with rabbits. She has three now. She wanted another, but said she would wait until Tyler passed on to get anymore. What a sensible girl she is. She said three was enough responsibility. She has been so good about taking those three out onto the grass on the nicer days. They have been out three times this past week.

They also had some leftover chicks...just the cornish rocks it looked like. They were yellow chicks...so they were either leghorns or rocks. The yellow chicks will be white when grown.

I told the boy at the check out in Rome the story about the young girl at the one in Hiram. He was not too proud to admit that he didnt know the terms and differences either, but that he was willing to learn.

So right there he asked me the terms and I told him what they were. He admitted that he didnt know what a pullet was.

So I told him these things:

A pullet is any female chicken under a year old.

A cockeral is any male chicken under a year old.

A bantam (he didnt know this either, he asked if that meant a 'fixed' hen or rooster) is a small breed of chicken.

He asked me if I could tell a male from a female when they were day old chicks. I told him the truth...NO. LOL I told him it was hard for the untrained eye to know.

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Sunday I spent the better part of the day outside. Cleaning waterers, filling feeders and waterers. Making minor repairs on some of the pens. I moved the Golden Phoenix Pen. Ian had decided to let the pool pump stay open and so when it overfills it drains. Their pen is close to the pump...and has become a terrible muddy mess in there. So they are moved to a dry grassy area. I had to make some repairs once it was moved. When a pen sits in one place for a long time the grass and dirt end up covering a lot of the wooden frame along the bottom. Its not a bad thing as it keeps the pen anchored in some of the high winds that we can get out here. Not so good if you want to move the pen. I got it out without too much trouble and made some minor repairs on it. Good as new now. Oh their legs are looking better after three treatments of mineral oil now. It is just going to take time and keeping on top of the treatments and they will heal up and be fine eventually.

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Now...I did have a header up there that spoke of the incubator didnt I?

Yesterday I found two of my Serama hens sitting on a pile of eggs. I took them all. They wre all quite nasty with mud crusted on them. I took three from the other pen of smaller Serama also, not being sat on.

I took all the nasty eggs in and candled them all (put a flashlight to the egg while in the dark) and out of about 12 eggs there were two that were already growing. You could see the little dark floaty spot in there...that will be the eye eventually...floating around...everything swimming to and fro in there.

Well that was as good an excuse as any to get down the incubator and get those little ones in there and finish them up growing.

So here I go...time to start hatching babies! On the front row are the two I cleaned up (I was taking a chance doing this because it removes the protective layer that keeps bacteria out of the egg...but you should have SEEN them...ugh. I couldnt put those in there with the other eggs like that)

The second row are the eggs I picked up from the smaller Serama. I only have the one hen now...and I thought maybe I should go ahead and hatch some more from them.

The one egg alone is the one Polish egg I have gotten from Kuckoo and Coco.

The last row are the eggs I have been saving for days now from the Sultans. I will really be surprised if any of these are fertile as everytime I have ever seen Rod or the other male trying to mate the two girls it looks off the mark to me. We will see.

I will continue collecting eggs from everyone and keep on hatching til I have had enough. I feel a long hatch season coming on. ;)

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One more note of good news. It has been seven days since the last bait was taken. I think all the predators that knew about this food source are gone. Thank goodness.

10 comments:

madcobug
said...

I believe you will get eggs this season from Ruby. That pair is so cute. These sunny warm days will be good to dry up the mud around your place. Looking forward to seeing some more of you own newly hatched chicks. Hugs, Helen

Kelly I have only eaten a couple of eggs since watching that video you put on your journal!!! lol Looked at my eggs and it said from Ohio!!! Yikes! lol If you were close I would buy eggs from you if you sell them. lol I think I will be buying eggs from this lady down the road from me. lol Glad you got out and about... does a body good. I have heard it said.. like a bull in a china closet. lol I got a chicken when around the age of 9 and it turned out to be a Rooster. lol Pet rooster. lol Interesting.. did not know about the flash light. hmmm Glad to hear about the predators being gone. Hope they don't come back. Wonder what it was?? Have a wonderful week with blessings, Janie

Kelly glad you had such a good weekend ~ Sounds like you were busy Sunday ~ Love the picture of Ruby and Rudy ~ and looking forward to seeing if any of those eggs hatch ~ I hope there is a little chick in each one of those eggs ~ hope that is an end to those predators ~ Ally x

OH my if I took my child in a place like that we would owe a fortune! You would think that people with wild children would just know! BAD IDEA!! lol I know we do! Boy you had a busy day there! Can't wait to see the chicks hatch. I would love to see a video of that! Never seen one hatch before.

Good to hear you are going with the natural flow, you eggs, chick and wonderful stories of their growth. Its like talking to my sister about the nieces and nephews. I wonder how many other people find your posting a necessary part of every day. Face the fact you are addictive. A smile a day keeps the blues away. Quite seriously thinking of starting the incubation process myself, got 27 eggs in the last few days and don't want them to go to waste so guess I will start the incubator. Have a great week and look forward to enjoying the journey from egg to show ribbons.

Love the pics, they are so cute! I think I might pull some of the eggs and if they are good put them in my incubator. I have never done chicken eggs - what temp do I maintain? I have the same incubator you do and have the auto turner, would that be okay to use with chicken eggs? I used to do quail & pheasants so this will be a fun thing to do. Good luck with your hatch!!xxxLisa